I doubt the initramfs is (completely) at fault, mine is rather small (and I haven't done anything to try to minimize its size):

    $ lsinitcpio -a /boot/initramfs-linux.img
    ==> Image: initramfs-linux.img
    ==> Created with mkinitcpio 26
    ==> Kernel: 5.3.7-arch1-2-ARCH
    ==> Size: 9.87 MiB
    ==> Compressed with: gzip
      -> Uncompressed size: 25.97 MiB (.379 ratio)
      -> Estimated decompression time: 0.184s
    ...